{"id":358862,"date":"2025-10-03T08:25:15","date_gmt":"2025-10-03T08:25:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/358862\/"},"modified":"2025-10-03T08:25:15","modified_gmt":"2025-10-03T08:25:15","slug":"quebecers-rallying-behind-toronto-blue-jays","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/358862\/","title":{"rendered":"Quebecers rallying behind Toronto Blue Jays"},"content":{"rendered":"

MONTREAL \u2013 Louis-Philippe Guy wasn\u2019t always a Toronto Blue Jays fan.<\/p>\n

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As a young boy, his family would drive six hours south from his hometown of Chicoutimi, Que., to see the Montreal Expos play at the Olympic Stadium.<\/p>\n

Now, 21 years after the Expos moved to Washington, D.C., the minor baseball coach from Montreal\u2019s South Shore and Blue Jays lover drives for hours to see the team play in Toronto and other Major League Baseball cities, and says his kids love the tradition just as much as he did growing up.<\/p>\n

\u201cI had to mourn for 10 years after the Expos left,\u201d Guy, 41, said. But when Quebecer Russell Martin started playing for Toronto in 2015, \u201cI adopted the Blue Jays.\u201d<\/p>\n

With the Jays set to play against the New York Yankees in Game 1 of the American League Division Series this Saturday, Guy said he\u2019s feeling hopeful more youth will take up the sport.<\/p>\n

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\u201cThe Blue Jays are a great inspiration for the kids,\u201d said Guy, also a news talk radio host for 98.5 FM in Montreal.<\/p>\n

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There had been a slump in Quebec children playing the sport after the Expos left Montreal in 2004, Guy said, but that changed after 2015, when the Blue Jays took home a division title.<\/p>\n

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\u201cThey didn\u2019t grow up with the Expos, they\u2019re Blue Jays fans,\u201d Guy said of young Quebecers who love the sport. \u201cIt\u2019s really the whole country\u2019s team, Quebec included. There\u2019s no two solitudes when we talk about the Blue Jays, francophone and anglophone are hand in hand.\u201d<\/p>\n

The series that begins Saturday is going to be huge for the Blue Jays, said Marc Griffin, former Expos player and commentator for the French-language sports station RDS. \u201cI\u2019m pretty optimistic that they can play, that they can actually win this series to go to the American League Championship. They had a great season.\u201d<\/p>\n

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A frequent attendee of their games, Griffin said he has no doubt many Quebecers will travel to see them live.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think Montreal is really cheering for the Blue Jays,\u201d he said. \u201cYou can definitely see it for yourself at the games, you hear the French language, and you still see many fans decked out in Expos gear.\u201d<\/p>\n

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When Jeremy Filosa took the train from the west end of Montreal to go see the Blue Jays play earlier this summer, he was taken aback by how many passengers were also on the way to the game.<\/p>\n

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\u201cIn the wagon I was in, it was just insane to see how many baseball fans there were, all the people dressed up in Expos gear, in Blue Jays gear,\u201d said Filosa, who hosts a popular French-language podcast about the team alongside Gavino de Falco.<\/p>\n

He said he\u2019s taken the train in years past to cover the games, but the number of fans on board and the atmosphere this season has been \u201ccrazy.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Blue Jays haven\u2019t won a playoff game since 2016. The team advanced to the World Series on two occasions in franchise history, in 1992 and 1993, and won both times.<\/p>\n

Another reason Montrealers are drawn to the Jays this year, Filosa said, is because of Vladimir Guerrero Jr., who joined the Blue Jays in 2019 and was born in Montreal. His father, Vladimir Guerrero, played for the Expos from 1996 to 2003 and was a fan favourite.<\/p>\n

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Quebecers, Filosa said, \u201cabsolutely love baseball.\u201d<\/p>\n

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 3, 2025.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t&copy 2025 The Canadian Press\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MONTREAL \u2013 Louis-Philippe Guy wasn\u2019t always a Toronto Blue Jays fan. As a young boy, his family would…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":358863,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2378],"tags":[5,377,10864,2554,4,185,282,70,2553],"class_list":{"0":"post-358862","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-toronto-blue-jays","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-blue-jays","10":"tag-blue-jays-baseball","11":"tag-bluejays","12":"tag-mlb","13":"tag-sports","14":"tag-toronto","15":"tag-toronto-blue-jays","16":"tag-torontobluejays"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/115309283244547991","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/358862","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=358862"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/358862\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/358863"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=358862"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=358862"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=358862"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}